A Nation of Laws

A lot of the people who've been so heated about the immigration issue seem to be focussed on the law-breaking facet. Last night in his speech, the President reiterated that we are a "nation of laws." Many are upset with anything short of deporting all the illegal aliens in the country, because they broke the law in coming, and are dead-set against 'amnesty.'

The whole focus on the sanctity of law brings to mind other ongoing issues, and made me wonder: if for some reason, a President decided that the security of the nation depended on immediately granting every illegal alien in the country citizenship, wouldn't it be within his powers as Commander-in-chief in wartime to do so? Especially if he drafted them?

I mean, obviously there are laws against it, and provisions of the Constitution that might suggest he had no power to do this, but in view of the brilliant legal work done by White House lawyers to date, why should that matter? Clearly, immigration and naturalization are under the control of the executive, right? And he is the Chief Executive. And a few million new enlistees would take the load off our overburdened military, which has got to help protect us from terrorists.

I think we should have legal scholars address this question. Perhaps we could get some right-wing pundits to work on it.